Two editors will leave the department—Suzanne Daley, the outgoing editor, and Dean Murphy, the deputy editor—and, according to several sources, up to four additional editors will also leave the desk and are currently looking for other jobs at the paper (David Firestone, a deputy; Jack Kadden, another deputy; Joan Nassivera, assistant national editor; and Suzanne Spector, the Web editor). 

By The Times’ standards, that’s an upheaval.

“Head-snapping,” said one reporter.

“Highly unusual,” said another Times source.

It’s standard practice for a new department head to assemble his own team. But the fact that Mr. Berke is on the verge of replacing roughly half the editors on the national desk less than a month after he was named editor—he hasn’t even formally started the job yet—is notable for a newsroom that has had so little movement in recent years.

“It is normal for someone taking over a major desk to build their own team. I did it myself, though at a much slower pace,” said Ms. Daley, the outgoing national editor, who will be a European correspondent reporting from New York.

Generally it takes many months for a department head to put together that team. This time, it’s been “on a swifter timetable than usual,” acknowledged Mr. Berke in an email.

Still a week away from filling the editor’s desk, Mr. Berke has already been given greater latitude than most new department heads, due to his close relationship with Bill Keller and Jill Abramson, sources said. Mr. Berke was most recently The Times’ assistant managing editor. Among other jobs, he was the traffic cop for the front page.

He has been a favorite of the top bosses since he took over his job in 2005. “Rick is trying to make a strong impression, but he’s coming off the masthead and getting more help than most department heads would have had,” said one senior editor. “He’s gotten the permission to do it quickly.”

“Yes, he’s moved quickly to assemble his team,” said Mr. Keller in an email. “From his masthead perch, he’s had a chance to study the entire newsroom, so he didn’t have to do a lot of additional reporting or auditioning to know who he wanted.”

In mid-February, when Mr. Keller announced that Mr. Berke was taking over the national desk, it surprised many. The Times gossip mill kept churning out the name Dean Murphy, Ms. Daley’s deputy, as her likely successor.

Mr. Keller had other plans. He conducted no formal search and gave the job to Mr. Berke.

In a memo announcing the change, Mr. Keller said that the “amazing” Rick Berke “has done it all—except, before this, being the head of a major news department.”
Though Mr. Berke’s experience is deep—he worked in the Washington bureau for 19 years, rising from night editor to national political correspondent to Washington editor before joining the masthead in 2005—he has never run a department. And though it could appear like a demotion to step down from the masthead to work on the national desk, there are likely greater factors at play.

Indeed, it’s widely believed that Mr. Berke’s move to the national desk means he is being groomed for a bigger job. In less than four years, Mr. Keller will turn 65, the mandatory retirement age for executive editor. Ms. Abramson is among a very short list of candidates to replace Mr. Keller. Mr. Berke, who worked alongside Ms. Abramson in Washington for more than a year when she was the bureau chief, is among a very short list of candidates who could work alongside her again as managing editor.

“He needs this experience to be Jill’s number two,” said one source.

With the national desk in his control now, Mr. Berke is essentially going back to school to get the degree he’s never had.

And so far, here’s what he’s working with: Dean Murphy, Ms. Daley’s deputy, who was passed over for the job, will take the deputy spot in the business section under Larry Ingrassia. David Firestone said that Mr. Berke asked him to stay on, but he was still undecided.

“There are a lot of changes going to the national desk, and I haven’t decided if I’m going to stay,” said Mr. Firestone. “I was asked to stay, but I can’t say at this point what’s likely to happen next.” (Sources said that Mr. Firestone may take a job on the editorial board.)

Mr. Berke told Jack Kadden, Suzanne Spector and Joan Nassivera, all editors on the national desk, that they would have to find new jobs at the paper, sources said. Mr. Berke, often described as one of the nice guys in the shark tank that is The Times, is allowing them the time to find new jobs before booting them from the desk, the sources added.

And in the next week, Mr. Berke is expected to make more announcements: formally naming Mr. Nagourney, a former colleague in Washington and a close friend, the Los Angeles bureau chief, giving him the plum assignment that he’s been due for some time; naming Lisa Tozzi, a popular staffer on the Web, as one of his deputies; and bringing in Marcus Mabry, the enterprise editor for the business section, to be an editor. 

The seeds are being planted quickly. “There are no grand designs behind the move,” said Mr. Berke in an email, discussing his new job. “It grew out of some blue-sky discussions among top editors, and I’m really excited about the challenge.”

“We made Rick national editor because we were confident he’d be a great national editor,” said Mr. Keller. “He’s journalistically ambitious and his enthusiasm for great stories is infectious.”

jkoblin@observer.com

MORE: Former Bookforum editor Chris Lehmann joins Yahoo News >

 In the past week, we’ve learned that the paper’s Styles editor, national editor and assistant managing editor were all getting new jobs at the paper. Two of those three editors were moving into reporting positions—reversing the career track normally taken at big news organizations. This comes only a few months after the paper’s culture editor became the paper’s restaurant critic, yet another writing job. So what’s the big idea? Times executive editor Bill Keller has gone to great lengths to argue that these changes do not indicate that his editors are being banished to Siberia.

In the memo announcing that Suzanne Daley would be leaving her job of heading up the paper’s national coverage to take on a “special assignment” reporting on Europe, he said, “I have no doubt she will return to important editing roles. She is too good at it to be away for long.” When he announced Mr. Sifton as the new food writer, he said, “For the record, it is our expectation that this will not be the end of Sam’s career as an editor/manager/entrepreneur/mentor.” And this week when he announced that Trip Gabriel would be leaving as Styles editor to write education enterprise pieces, he said, “We unleash Trip into reporting with the understanding that this is not a departure from editing, but a detour.”

(Also: When Bill Keller announced that Rick Berke, the paper’s assistant managing editor, would leave the masthead to take over the national desk, he said, “And I expect we haven’t seen the last of him on the masthead.” And! And! When Jon Landman left the digital editing role at The Times to replace Mr. Sifton as culture editor, he said, “Jon will not be extracting himself from the Web, not by a long shot.”)

O.K., Bill, we get the point!

Several Times sources said the flurry of changes reflects the fact that a hiring freeze and a lame job market prevented any real movement at the paper. They see the changes as a wake-up call for these individuals, and for the paper.

Mr. Keller said as much, too. “Journalists are disposed to a kind of A.D.D., a restless curiosity,” he said in an email to Off the Record. “While there are, of course, writers who happily specialize for most of a career, one great lure of this work is that you can move from subject to subject, from reporting to editing and back again. So, think of it as pushing the ‘refresh’ button.”

jkoblin@observer.com

The paper's TV beat is strong enough to sustain the loss—wunderkind Brian Stelter can easily take up his duties along with the paper's longtime TV maven, Bill Carter—and the paper's education beat can really use the help.

Last October, at The Times' state of the newsroom get-together, Throw Stuff at Bill, Mr. Keller admitted, "When we went through that excruciating exercise to figure out how to lose 100 jobs in the newsroom, we decided we could come down a little bit on the education department." It rankled one staffer, who wondered why the education department had been essentially wiped away, but Mr. Keller reminded her that it's still a priority for two desks—national and Metro.

Since he'll be doing a primarily digital gig now, his announcement memo is written by national editor Suzanne Daley and digital editor Jon Landman.

Here it is:

For almost 20 years, Jacques Steinberg has brought his innate curiosity and limitless enthusiasm to a variety of beats -- from Westchester County, to education, to newspapers. In his six years covering television, he has had encounters with luminaries like Dan Rather, Don Imus and the entire cast of "The View." He wrote about "Mad Men" before anyone knew how hot it would become.

Now, Jacques is taking on a new challenge. He is joining the National Desk’s education team and will be the anchor of a blog about college admissions called The Choice.

As a former education reporter and the author of a book about the admissions process at Wesleyan University called "The Gatekeepers,"

Jacques is uniquely qualified to lead this enterprise. He hopes to create a site that prospective college students and their parents will turn to regularly for information and advice about applying to college and finding the money to pay for it.

He’ll be getting a lot of help from others who cover higher education, including Tamar Lewin of the National Desk, Lisa Foderaro of the Metro Desk, and Jane Karr, editor of Education Life.

The Choice officially launches on Monday (March 30), to capture the moment when high school seniors are receiving their acceptance letters and struggling to decide which school to go to.

And Jacques is asking for your help. If you’re at any stage of this process -- starting a college savings fund; mapping out a summer college tour for your high school junior; dealing with the prospect of your triplets leaving the nest -- please let him know at [redacted]. We’re hoping some staff members could be coaxed into telling parts of their stories to a wider audience.

Suzanne Daley and Jonathan Landman

In the yet-to-be-named column, Barry will be "taking his voice and his notebook beyond the Hudson to 47 other states," according to a press release. Alaska and Hawaii need not apply.

Full release is after the jump.

Date: Nov 14, 2006
Subject: From Suzanne Daley and David Firestone: A New Column for Dan Barry

To the Staff:

In his memoir, Dan Barry describes his fear, when he first walked past the personalized landfills in the Times' newsroom in 1995, that he might not make it past his six-month probationary period. Somehow he squeaked by, and for the next 11 years, he distinguished himself and his newspaper on some of the most important assignments that Metro and National had to offer, from the wreckage of Flight 800 to the squalor of Room 9, from the salt wash of Staten Island to the fog of Ground Zero and the dark waters of Katrina. Since 2003, he has the been the steward of the "About New York" column, taking readers along a remarkable journey through the sounds and the smells, the sages and cranks, the pain and hidden beauty of the five boroughs. He has done so in the tradition of the paper's finest columnists, with an unmistakable voice of wry grace and rueful passion.

Now it is time to extend his abilities to a new frontier. Dan is about to inaugurate a new weekly column for the National Desk, taking his voice and his notebook beyond the Hudson to 47 other states. The column, still unnamed, will in essence be a national version of "About New York," and those who read of his journeys through the floodlands earlier this year know the power of that combination. Dan will burrow under news stories and unearth tales in wheat-field counties, cul-de-sacs and inner cities, and we hope he will soon become intimately familiar with the nation's air traffic system.

This is a new venture for Dan and for us, and in many ways it will be defined as it progresses. But we know of no one better to provide that definition, illuminating far corners of the country as he has done so well for our hometown. The column will begin in the new year.

Please join us in giving Dan your best wishes and story ideas.

Suzanne Daley
David Firestone

TO THE STAFF:

Jodi Kantor came to The Times in early 2003 with a mandate to
remake the Arts & Leisure section. Now, having accomplished this
task with great skill, spirit and aplomb, and having helped in the
process to remake the entire Culture Department, bringing new
reporters, critics, editors and many, many new columns of news and
opinion into its report, she has asked to take on a new challenge.
Starting next month, Jodi will be a reporter on the "Way We Live"
team, reporting to Suzanne Daley. "After a couple of years in the
building," she said, "I'm dying to actually get out and report
some stories myself."

Before she goes, though, it's worth taking some time to recognize
Jodi's achievements here in the Culture Department. They have been
myriad and important. First and foremost, of course, is the way in
which Jodi has transformed the Arts & Leisure franchise, giving it
not just a handsome new look but completely revamping its tone and
substance. In the two-plus years since she brought in the low black
chair and long gray couch that will now mark the position of A&L
editor as surely as the inability to make dinner reservations on
Tuesday nights, Jodi has not only given the section a news-driven
focus (a real feat, given A&L's terrifying five-day lead time), but
she has done so without sacrificing its devotion to richly
narrative, long-form journalism -- or its punishing schedule of
special issues. It's been a hell of a run.

Beyond Arts & Leisure, Jodi has also been at the center of the
department's restructuring process. With Frank Rich, Steve Erlanger
and some guy named Adam, and later with Jon Landman, Jim Schachter
and me, Jodi helped draft the plans for the department as it now
exists -- divided among subject areas, with vastly expanded roles
for reporters, editors and critics--and played a crucial role in
landing some pretty big fish: Manohla Dargis and Nicolai Ouroussoff
among them. Hers will be large shoes to fill.

More on that subject later. In the meantime, please join the
Culture Crew under the yellow umbrella on the northwest corner of
the fourth floor, on Wednesday, July 27 at 5:45 p.m., to raise a
glass to a woman who can't drink these days, but to whom so many of
us owe thanks and to whom we'll offer a standing ovation for a job
well done.

Sam